So where are the jobs? And if they're nowhere to be found, how are economic developers supposed to do their jobs?
There's a lot of evidence these days that the economy is recovering from the big crash in 2008. The stock market is much stronger than it was back then, and the housing market seems to have bottomed out. Retail sales are still sluggish but appear to be creeping upward.
But jobs are another story. From a peak of 146 million jobs in 2007, employment in the United States has dropped to around 139.8 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- and has stubbornly remained at that level for the last 18 months, despite aggressive efforts by the Barack Obama administration to keep the economy afloat. In every previous recession over the past 50 years job growth has slowed to a halt, but it has never really gone down.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Measuring Economic Development Without Depending on Jobs
Author: William Fulton
